Cite as: 527 U. S. 150 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
to explain why it would not disturb a trial court's factual findings. Borden's Farm Products Co. v. Ten Eyck, 297 U. S. 251, 261 (1936); see also Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. v. Grosjean, 301 U. S. 412, 420 (1937) (accepting trial court's findings of fact because they have "substantial support in the record").
Nor is the absence of the words "substantial evidence" in the CCPA's cases especially significant. Before the APA, the use of that term to describe court/agency review proceeded by fits and starts, with the standardization of the term beginning to take hold only after Congress began using it (or the like) in various federal statutes. For example, this Court first used the phrase "substantial evidence" in the agency context to describe its approach to the Interstate Commerce Commission's (ICC's) factual findings, ICC v. Union Pacific R. Co., 222 U. S. 541, 548 (1912), even though the underlying statute simply authorized a court of competent jurisdiction to suspend or set aside orders of the Commission, § 12, 36 Stat. 551. The Court did not immediately grant the Federal Trade Commission the same leeway it granted the ICC, see FTC v. Curtis Publishing Co., 260 U. S. 568, 580 (1923), even though the underlying Act used language to which the phrase "substantial evidence" might have applied, see § 5, 38 Stat. 720 (the "findings of the commission as to the facts, if supported by testimony, shall be conclusive"). As the words "substantial evidence" began to appear more often in statutes, the Court began to use those same words in describing review standards, sometimes supplying the modifier "substantial" when Congress had left it out. See, e. g., Consolidated Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U. S. 197, 229 (1938); see Stason, "Substantial Evidence" in Administrative Law, 89 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1026, 1026-1028 (1941) (collecting statutes); see also Dobson v. Commissioner, 320 U. S. 489, 499 (1943) (speaking generally of the "theoretical and practical reason[s] for . . . [crediting] administrative decisions"). The patent statutes, however, did not and do not
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